Psychopath (23 page)

"That could of happened the couple times he fell off his bike.  Probably caught his arms the exact wrong way," Hank said.

"It happens when someone becomes angry with a child," Jonah said.  "Say someone were to grab hold of Sam and decide to teach him a lesson."  He looked directly at Heaven Garber again.

"I know everybody’s bad-mouthing Heaven and me," Hank said.  "But hear one thing — Sam would never tell a lie about us.  And I’m here to tell you we ain’t never—"

Jonah shook his head.  He nodded at the door.  "The door is locked," he said, just above a whisper.  "This office is soundproof."

Hank glanced slowly over his shoulder, looked back at Jonah warily.

"I know about children," Jonah said.  "Sometimes they get out of control."

"Not Sam," Hank said.

"Tell me the truth," Jonah said, shifting his gaze to Heaven, his hands clenched.

"Like I said, ain’t nothing to—" Hank started.

"Shut your mouth," Jonah shot back, still staring at Heaven, who stopped chewing her gum.

Maybe Hank heard the killer inside Jonah.  Or maybe he just saw the muscles rippling in his forearms.  Whatever the reason, he didn’t say another word.

"The spiral fractures in Sam’s arms run counterclockwise," Jonah said to Heaven.

"That, together with the pattern of bruising over the newer fracture, proves that whoever caused them is left-handed.  Like you."

Heaven turned to Hank.  "I ain’t gonna listen to this.  Let’s..."

Jonah saw his mother’s lips moving as Heaven spoke.  Her words ran together into an indecipherable drone.  And his hatred for Clevenger and Whitney McCormick and this woman became one storm inside him, the thunder and lightning obscuring the memories trying to surface from his unconscious — memories of his mother’s unspeakable cruelty.

He tried to stand, but his legs would not budge, a paralysis that had besieged him before while meeting with parents who had abused their children.  It was as if his mind was turning his muscles off, lest he do to Heaven Garber everything he wanted to do to her.  "Listen to me," Jonah said, interrupting Heaven’s rant.  "I don’t believe you’re evil."

Heaven looked blankly back at him.

"Something happened to you to turn you into a person who would attack a little boy.  Probably something horrible, probably when you were very young.  Maybe when you were exactly nine, like Sam."  Jonah thought he saw a flicker of recognition in Heaven’s face.  Then it was gone.  "I can help you remember.  I can help you heal.  And maybe then you’d get your son back some day."

Heaven stood up.  "A lawyer’s all the help we need."

Hank stood, but slowly, as though Jonah’s last words — about the loss of his son — had knocked some of the fight out of him.

Jonah tried to raise his hands, but they were dead weights.  "I’ll be working here two weeks," he said to Heaven.  "Come see me.  I’m willing to meet with you every day."

Heaven’s lip curled, baring teeth that gapped in the center, exactly like Jonah’s mother’s.  Or did Jonah only see them that way?  "You doctors think you know everything," she seethed.  "Well, I got—"

Hank grabbed hold of her meaty arm and began pulling her toward the door.

"Please," Jonah said.  "Wait."

Heaven pulled her arm away from her husband, turned back to Jonah with a fragile indulgence on her face, as though expecting an apology.

"You’ve grown large in size because of how small you feel inside," Jonah said.  "But you can’t swallow or drink or smoke all your suffering.  Surely, you have ulcers already.  Have they started to bleed yet?"

Heaven was breathing hard, but seemed to be half listening.

"Your pain is choking your heart, too.  You feel it every time you walk up that flight of stairs — the one you say that Sam fell down."

Heaven shook her head.  "You don’t know nothin’ about me," she protested, but weakly, a hint of fear in her voice — fear of the Truth, which is no different than the fear of God.

"You know that I do," Jonah said.  He squinted at Heaven’s lips as they turned deep red — the color of his mother’s lipstick.  Oh, how he missed her.  What he would give to be held by her.  To smell her hair, nuzzle against her warm neck.  He closed his eyes, saw her again huddled in that corner, blowing him a kiss.  And when he finally opened his eyes, the Garbers were gone.

*            *            *

Evening, April 7, 2003

Chelsea, Massachusetts

At 6:10
P.M.
, Clevenger heard a flurry of activity on the street below, looked out the window, and saw Billy make his way through the mob of reporters and disappear through the front door.  He felt a profound sense of relief.  But as Billy began climbing the five flights to the loft, Clevenger’s anxiety level started climbing, too.  He was worried for him.  He was back on drugs and troubled enough to have run off without saying where he was going.

Clevenger was also worried over the exact right thing to do.  And he didn’t want his anger to get in the way of him doing it.  "Don’t jump down his throat about the pot," he reminded himself.  "Or the credit card."

The door opened. Billy walked in.  He had a couple
New York Times
newspapers tucked under his arm, which made Clevenger concerned he was dwelling on the Highway Killer case.  He closed the door behind him, nodded to himself as if working up the courage to say something important.

"What?" Clevenger gently prompted him.

"I can’t stay here right now," he said.

Clevenger felt like he had been kicked in the gut.  "You’ve got to tell me what’s going on with you, Billy.  You can’t expect—"

"I’ve got to get into detox," he said.  "I need it.  That, and AA or NA or whatever.  I can’t stay away from the drugs.  You’ve been good with me, but I need more help."

Sometimes, if all too rarely, the world gives you what you want.  Clevenger felt like this was one of those times.  "Fair enough," he said.

"Maybe you could take me over to North Shore Medical Center?  A couple guys from school went there when they had problems."

"Of course," Clevenger said.  "You don’t have to do this by yourself."  And then he did the one thing that seemed the most natural to him and the most uncomfortable at the same time, maybe because his father had never done it to him.  Not once.  He walked over to Billy, put his arms around him, drew him close and held him tight.  And after a few moments, he felt Billy do the same to him.  And then he journeyed further still, turning and kissing his adoptive son’s cheek.  And he knew that with everything that had happened to each of them and between them, with everything that they still had to face, that it would all be easier for that embrace and that kiss and the ones that could follow.  Because they could face it all together.

Billy’s eyes were full when Clevenger let go of him.  But there was something different about his tears this time.  This time he was trying to hold them back.  This time they were undeniably real.  They made him tremble.  He had to clear his throat to speak.  "I’ll trade you one favor for another," he said.  He pulled the newspapers out from under his arm.  "You give me that lift to the hospital, I give you a hint about the Highway Killer."

Clevenger hesitated.  He really didn’t want Billy involved in the case.  But for the first time he realized he might not be able to stop him.  Billy was standing right there with the
Times
in his hand, five days from having been named in the Highway Killer’s first letter, two minutes from having been hounded by reporters for his comments.

Even more important, Billy clearly
wanted
to help. 
He wanted to help catch a killer
.  And maybe letting him feed that urge would help him do with his potential violence what Clevenger had done with his own — transmute it into a desire to heal, a commitment to protect.  He thought of a few lines from the Highway Killer’s latest letter:

Have you ever wanted to kill, Frank?  Did you use alcohol and drugs to blunt that impulse?  Do you work to understand murderers in order to understand yourself?

Yes, Clevenger thought.  "Yes" was the answer to each of those three questions.  And maybe Billy was no different than he was.  Maybe he wanted to help Clevenger with the investigation in order to help himself.  Maybe he was ready to harness his pain in service to relieving pain in others.  "It’s a deal," he told him.

Billy sat down on the couch, spread the newspapers in front of him.  "This guy supposedly gets attacked by his father, right?"

Clevenger nodded.

"And he’s thinking about his mom?" He shrugged.  "I never did.  Not when I was being beaten."  He shrugged.  "Did you?"

Clevenger thought about it.  He thought about all the nights he had absorbed his father’s violence, how it had taken every ounce of strength he had just to control his fear.  "No," he said.

"Course not," Billy said.  "You were praying for it to stop.  And if you were like me, you found yourself wishing you had a normal father.  I actually fantasized I had one somewhere, that he’d blow through the door one day and carry me out of there."

"Same here," Clevenger said.

"So the way I see it this guy is making up the woman in the corner of the room," Billy said.  "He wants to believe he’s got a good mother, a guardian angel.  But he doesn’t.  He’s got the worst.  She’s the one attacking him."  He leaned forward, started to speak faster.  "There wasn’t any birthday party in the park.  There weren’t any gifts.  There were just the beatings.  He invented all that happy horseshit.  He didn’t live with a devil and an angel.  Just a devil.  A she-devil.  The guy’s schizo."

That last word,
schizo
, helped Clevenger crystallize the idea that had begun to form in his mind as he listened to Billy.  "Unless she was both," he said.

"What do you mean?" Billy asked.

"It’s easier to survive something predictable.  Something that’s always bad news.  Like when my dad would come home.  I at least knew what to expect.  I knew what he was."

"So you could psych yourself up to get through it."

"And I could hate him."

Billy looked at him quizzically.  "That’s good?"

"It keeps the hate from going underground, building steam," Clevenger said.  He paused.  "If the Highway Killer had a mother who was kind and loving some of the time and sadistic at other times, he would never have been able to discharge his rage.  It would all get dammed up in his unconscious.  Because what he loved in the world — that ideal mother he writes about — is also the one torturing him.  So there’s nowhere for the hate to go.  Attack the ‘she-devil,’ and you attack the ‘angel,’ too.  Kill one, they both die."

"Which is why he kills other people, they’re just stand-ins for her."

"Could be."  That idea certainly explained why the Highway Killer would get so close to his victims, mimicking the idealized maternal bond, then cutting it off — literally.  Paulette Bramberg was just too close a facsimile.  Probably a woman the age of his mother.  Possibly a woman who even looked like his mother.

"So maybe she did give him that party," Billy went on, "and he did get all those gifts, and then they get home, and she’s a completely different person.  Beats on him, out of the blue.  Starts screaming about not having enough money.  Busts up his toys."

Not bad, Clevenger thought.  The kid was following right along.  "And when that happens," Clevenger said, "he splits off the image of the angel, keeps it alive in the corner of the room, and takes his beating.  He can’t bear to think his mother is attacking him.  So he invents an abusive father."  He nodded to himself.

"My guess?  He didn’t have a father at home at all.  Or he had a very, very weak one."

"So what do we do now?" Billy asked, excitedly.

Clevenger winked at him.  "We get you to detox."  As the words left his mouth, he knew they sounded abrupt.  Dismissive.  He watched Billy slowly wilt before his eyes.  "And when you’re out," he quickly added, "I want you to come down to Quantico with me and learn more about the case."

The energy came right back into his eyes.  "Are you serious?" he asked.  "You’d take me with you?"

"You’re good at this," Clevenger said.  "I could use your help."

e i g h t

Early Morning, April 8, 2003

Rock Springs, Wyoming

Jonah left his room at the Rock Springs Ambassador Motel at 12:20
A.M.
   He was having one of those ‘really dark nights of the soul’ his beloved F. Scott Fitzgerald had written of.  His spartan suite felt like a coffin.

He could not sleep more than fifteen minutes without being awakened by his usual nightmare, but with a horrifying twist.  The woman with flowing blonde curls who caressed him, then gnawed through his flesh and bone, hungry to devour his heart, now looked at him through his mother’s eyes.  Light brown.  Luminous.  And in his sleep he felt himself thirsting for her love even as he struggled to escape her, and stayed asleep longer than he should have, long enough to tell her that he loved her, but long enough, too, for the beast to scrape past his sternum.  So that when he did awaken, it was with a shriek, clutching his chest to keep his ravaged heart from tumbling out of his body.

Was this what Clevenger and McCormick were plotting?  To deprive him of the only true comfort he had ever had?  To take the memory of his mother?  Defile her?  Drive him over the edge of loneliness, into insanity?

His temples pounding and jaw aching, he got into his X5, turned on Mahler’s
Tenth Symphony
and headed for Route 80 East.  He took it about sixty miles to the exit for Bitter Creek, far enough away from the hospital to avoid being seen out alone, past midnight.  He was a visitor at the hospital, and, hence, a natural focus of curiosity.  He didn’t need to inspire more.

He pulled into the empty parking lot of an all-night diner, went inside with his copy of the
Times
, and ordered a large, black coffee from the plump, sixty-something woman tending the place.  Then he sat in a booth sipping the coffee and pretending to read Clevenger’s letter while stealing glances at her, just to reassure himself she was moving and breathing, to reassure himself he was actually awake, actually alive.  Like her.